When Boston University class of 2025 alum Phileas Gerou was thinking about what he would do after graduation, he said founding a startup “didn’t even cross [his] mind.”
Now he’s the founder of PROVIDR, a platform that he said “streamline[s]” the lending process for small businesses, which account for 99.9% of all U.S. firms.
“Instead of being part of the current process, I want to improve it,” he said.
Currently, Gerou said that if a bank wants to evaluate a small business’ creditworthiness, they have to manually analyze each one with a variety of different tools.
Moreover, they use the owner’s credit history for much of their analysis, which is not a good indicator of business health.
“It goes both ways. You can have a good credit score, but your business is not strong and it’s not going to be profitable,” Gerou said. “[Also, the business could be] strong. They’ve existed [for] five years. They have strong cash flow data, good customer reviews … and he or she will get rejected just because there’s no credit history.”
This problem exists, Gerou said, because banks cannot invest the millions of dollars required to build a comprehensive, automated system to properly analyze small businesses.
This is where PROVIDR comes in, he said. Using AI agents, the platform aims to cut costs for banks so they can approve more borrowers.
For businesses, PROVIDR aims to make loan criteria based on financial performance, not solely credit history.
“You would assume that such a problem would be solved. But there isn’t something that addresses both these issues … I didn’t come here and say, ‘I did this groundbreaking thing.’ It’s clear why they haven’t done it,” Gerou said. “It’s because they can’t afford to spend millions of dollars doing [research and development] to build their own proper model.”
The idea, he said, originally came from a class at BU on global capital markets. As part of a project, he and a team had to come up with and present a startup that solved a problem in the financial technology sector.
According to BU finance professor Mark Williams, who teaches the class, the project encourages students to develop an entrepreneurial, collaborative mindset in addition to showing students tangible applications of financial technology.
“[Students] may have a strong skill set in a certain aspect, but to do a fintech startup, you need engineers, you need graphic designers, you need finance people,” Williams said. “They learn very quickly that to be successful in a startup, you have to be collaborative.”
Geroue and his team pitched a startup that would use alternative data such as cash flow, customer reviews and whether the company has stayed in one location for a long time to fix the lending process, he said.
After students are done presenting, Williams said he typically encourages students to take their startup to the next level.
“That was the initial push,” Gerou said. “This guy clearly has experience and is very established. If he sees something in this, maybe I should look more into it.”
When Gerou followed up in later weeks and months about that possibility, Williams said, “it was very clear that his interest in being an entrepreneur and in the startup grew.”
Next, Gerou entered the Innovation Pathway, a three stage program run by Innovate@BU that offers funding, constructive criticism and tools for students looking to start their own venture.
Through the program, he said, he got mentorship to construct PROVIDR.
“We have an amazing group of founders, entrepreneurs and residents. Phileas, or anyone else that’s in the programs can have time with those experts,” said Tim Buntel, Innovate’s program director of business ventures. “Those relationships can be incredibly powerful.”
Gerou said Innovate helped connect him to bankers who provided advice for PROVIDR, which he said was a tremendous help.
During this time, he said, PROVIDR changed from being its own lending service to a tool banks could use to simplify their own processes.
That experience also convinced him that PROVIDR was solving a real problem.
“When I heard this, and I kept hearing it over and over and over again, I was excited … Talking to these people was all the validation I needed to say, ‘Okay, I’ll give this a chance [and do it] full time after graduation,” Gerou said.
Currently, PROVIDR is in Fly, the final stage of the Innovation Pathway.
This final stage means the product is getting delivered to the market and generating revenue, Buntel said.
Currently, Gerou said he is in talks with banks about piloting PROVIDR.
“I’m extremely happy with where we are now, but I recognize that I have so much more to do and accomplish to actually get this fully off the ground,” he said.
Even now, he is still in touch with his mentors at Innovate for feedback and advice.
“It’s an ongoing relationship. If they see an opportunity, they’ll send [it] to me. If I have any questions, I’ll go up to them,” Gerou said. “[Guidance] doesn’t stop when you graduate.”
